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Parents of middle school students throughout the Palo Alto Unified School District will get a chance to apply for their children to attend Ellen Fletcher Middle School next fall, as the district moves forward with an enrollment lottery in an effort to shore up the school’s student population.
The district’s Board of Education voted unanimously at its Tuesday, Dec. 14, meeting to authorize staff to hold an intradistrict lottery at Fletcher for the 2022-2023 school year.
Administrators haven’t yet decided exactly how many spots will be available as part of the lottery, although Superintendent Don Austin said via text that the school can “easily accommodate 60 transfers.”
Families of incoming sixth through eighth graders who live within the school district’s boundaries but aren’t zoned for Fletcher will have a chance to apply. If more students apply than slots exist for, a lottery will be held.
The move is an attempt to increase enrollment at the school, which has dipped below 520 students, despite the campus having capacity for over 700, according to background information from district staff.
Unless changes are made, enrollment could “conceivably drop” below 500 students next year, the board’s meeting agenda states. As of Nov. 9, there are 319 students in sixth and seventh grade at Fletcher.
Fletcher’s enrollment has declined by roughly one-third since 2015 and sits well below those of the district’s two other middle schools. According to data the district collected in October, 820 students attend Frank S. Greene Jr. Middle School and 979 are at Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School.
The shrinking population at Fletcher has caused the school to lose support staff and has “limited some programs,” according to the meeting agenda. Some teachers are now being split between multiple schools because there weren’t enough students to justify a full teacher at Fletcher, Austin told the Weekly.
The board members first heard the superintendent’s proposal to create an enrollment lottery for Fletcher at their Nov. 16 meeting and were supportive of the idea.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the lottery plan passed unanimously with little board discussion and no members of the public turning out to speak. Austin said he had received limited feedback on the lottery since the November meeting, with only positive comments and requests for additional information.
“I appreciate staff’s work on this — both Fletcher staff and district staff — and I’m excited to see where it goes this year,” board member Jennifer DiBrienza said ahead of her vote in favor of the plan.
The superintendent had originally intended to bring the Fletcher lottery proposal back to the board next month, but he said district staff asked for it to come back sooner so that the lottery can be run in conjunction with the application processes for the district’s other choice programs.
Those who are admitted to Fletcher through the lottery will also gain admission to Gunn High School. The lottery doesn’t impact existing attendance boundaries.
Austin said at the Nov. 16 meeting that running the lottery will have “little or no downside,” although he acknowledged that it may not be sufficient on its own to address the school’s enrollment issues and that additional action may be needed in future years.
An informational meeting about the lottery plan is slated to be held over Zoom from 6-7 p.m. on Jan. 26. Applications are due by noon on Feb. 17, and the lottery will be held on Feb. 23. Parents then have until March 2 to decide whether to accept their child’s admission to Fletcher.
Families will receive more information after the winter break about the information night and lottery process, Austin said.
Palo Alto Unified board elects new leadership
The school board also voted at Tuesday’s meeting to elect new leadership for the upcoming year. Ken Dauber was unanimously picked to replace Shounak Dharap as the board’s president. Dauber has served as vice president for the past year and previously served as president in 2018.
After being elected, Dauber thanked Dharap for leading the board through 2021, acknowledging that it has been an unusually difficult year.
“I want to particularly note, Mr. Dharap, your skill and steadfastness in helping to navigate the district through the COVID pandemic and then the reopening. I think we were well-served by Mr. Dharap being in that role,” Dauber said. “Thank you on behalf of the board and the district for your service. ”
The board members also unanimously picked Jennifer DiBrienza as its vice president for the upcoming year. In Palo Alto Unified, the vice president also serves as the board’s clerk. DiBrienza previously served as president in 2019.
School boards typically elect new leadership near the end of each calendar year and often rotate through the positions.
Dauber was first elected to the board in 2014 and is currently serving his second term on the board, which expires in 2022. DiBrienza was elected in 2016 and is also currently serving her second term, which expires in 2024.
Using the words Dharap, Dauber, DiBrienza in the same sentence as “Leadership” is an oxymoron. They do NOT demonstrate leadership. Every Board Member that was in place 2020-2021 should be recalled and sued personally for the emotional distress and damage they caused students. Keeping secondary schools closed for a full year (when they could’ve opened Aug 2020), cow towing to teachers unions, was wrong, unethical, unnecessary and in some cases tragic with students attempting or succeeding in committing suicide because of being so depressed, isolated, and lacking friends in school for support. And these School Board Members’ damaging policies continue this year with high school start times that teachers, parents, and students ALL hate and say has resulted in LESS sleep. Travesty.
To Quote Dr. Vinay Prasad, UCSF, Covid Response team, Professor, statistician, renown epidemiologist:
“School closure was the greatest self inflicted wound of the pandemic. Sensible European nations did not close primary school at all, or only for 6 weeks, but places in the USA remained closed for more than a year. This was a net negative for the health and well-being of children, and will damage this nation for years to come. I am not sure we will recover. This decision was made only in some places in the USA, and not others, and was not explained by virus specific properties— it had no correlation with cases/100k or hospitalizations per capita—but solely the political valence of a region/ strength of teachers unions. When the history books are written, school closure will be viewed, as I have said before: a massively catastrophic and harmful blunder that was fueled by mis-information from the legacy media, and many pundits who lacked experience adjudicating trade-offs.”
Fletcher-dilemma?–Perhaps-it’s-time-to-revisit-MiddleSchool-vs-JrHigh-structure?
Many parents are pulling their kids out of public schools and opting for private education.
What’s the incentive to apply for the Fletcher lottery? If not enough people apply, then doesn’t the low enrollment problem continue?